List of the Month - reasons (not) to hate my home

My attempts to find somewhere new to live foundered on the twin rocks of my current landlord's bullying intransigence (the dumb bugger refused to allow me to extend my lease for a further month or two, even at a higher rent, and with the promise of introducing a friend to take over the apartment from me - with no gap in tenancy at all, and at an even higher rent!) and the extreme stupidity, bloody-mindedness, and inability to make a decision of all the prospective new landlords I was talking to (it seems a lot of Beijing landlords are unwilling to let their properties in the current depressed market: all of the places I looked at back in June are still available; and one of the landlords has actually raised his asking price since then!).   So, I am living in the same old place - supposedly for another full year.  (I could have signed up for two, to try to peg my rent for a bit longer, but.... well, I'm really hoping I might still be able to find somewhere else and do a moonlight flit.... at least, once I get towards the end of the next quarter I've paid for up front.)   I had been pondering a list of all the shortcomings of my present apartment, to try to energise myself in the desperate last-minute race to try to find an alternative at the end of last month.  Boy, did that backfire on me!  Now I find myself stuck here - indefinitely - with that catalogue of grievances and irritations swimming around in my head, haunting and taunting.   Here they are, then, the....   10 Reasons I Would Be Glad To Leave My Present Apartment   The dodgy electric wiring (which results in bulbs blowing with alarming frequency - so much so that I've grown complacent, despairing about trying to replace them.... and find that I am now living in near-total darkness!)   The crappy level of lighting in those rooms where the lights still work (trying to cook in the kitchen at night is probably ruining my eyesight)   The radiator pipes, which cause a maddening tick-tick-tick continuously for the 4 months the winter central heating is on   The shoddy quality of the fixtures and fittings (particularly in the kitchen, where the artificial ceiling - made out of something like linoleum - long ago came unstuck and is now precariously supported only by the gas pipes; and don't even get me started on the cupboards)   The lousy quality of the water pipes, and the water, which results in everything - the shower head, the washing machine - getting regularly clogged up with foul-smelling silt   The crappy gas-fired water-heater in the kitchen, which keeps on cutting out for no apparent reason - making even the washing-up a rather long drawn-out and frustrating business   The fact that my 'guest bathroom' has a bath that is too narrow for use by actual human beings, and no effective water-heater (it's connected to the one in the kitchen, which is nearly 100ft away, and - as griped above - cannot even provide a reliable supply of hot water in the kitchen)   The building site outside the window (not very noisy any more, but still an eyesore - and still nowhere near completion nearly a year after the work began)   The ever worsening rumble of traffic on the 2nd Ringroad (I was concerned about this when I first moved in, but it seemed very tolerable back then; traffic has got much worse in the last 5 years, and, in particular, the amount of heavy traffic in the wee small hours of the morning has got ridiculous); unless I can improvise some kind of "double glazing", I fear I shall be condemned to continue sleeping in my living-room (the two bedrooms are both too noisy now), even when (if??) that dratted building site finally shuts down its rattly pumps and generators   My landlord, who - even by the wretched standards of most landlords - is a greedy little toad       Aaaaargh!  Well, at least I capped it at 10.   I feel I ought perhaps to try to add some counterbalancing positive points here, just so that I don't go completely mad and hurl myself off the balcony on to the builders below.     5 Things I Rather Like About My Present Apartment After All   The location - 8 minutes to the subway, 15 minutes to the Bell Tower, 25 minutes to Nanluoguxiang (I can't now really imagine ever living in any other part of town)   The space (gosh, yes, even with two of the three main rooms completely unused, it is BIG)   The balcony (I don't like that it's enclosed, and I probably don't make as much use of it as I should - particularly since the builders took over the park beneath - but it is still rather nice to have it.... for sitting in the semi-open air on a warm summer's night)   Taxi heaven (a lot of drivers use my road as a less congested alternative to the adjacent 2nd Ringroad - with the result that I rarely have to wait more than 15 seconds to hail a cab, at any time of the day or night [and I mean any time])   The stairwell (which, as I've mentioned on here before, is probably the nicest stairwell in Beijing; indeed, possibly the only nice stairwell in Beijing)     There - I don't feel quite so manic now.     (And, since 'List of the Month' is supposed to be a Saturday feature, I'll try to backdate this.  The e-mail posting I've been using doesn't enable you to control tags or formatting or hyperlinks or datestamp or.... but I am now restored to direct Blogger access, albeit intermittent and incomplete; so I should be able to tweak some of these shortcomings.)